When little men ask so sweetly….

Little men get :o)

I have had a couple of days away from the sewing machine since I hurt my hand on Sunday afternoon (awwww sad face) but our littlest man (Zachary aged 2) has been asking if I would make him a bag. I told him I would but couldn’t do it straight away. It broke his little heart, he even brought the material to me out of the box and tried to pick up the sewing machine. So I sucked it up, worked through the pain and made him a messenger bag of his own.

I turned a few rectangles

Into a happy little 2 year old

I have also made Zac’s so that I can make the shoulder strap longer as he grows.

I like to line mine but you don’t have to and you can make it as big or as small as you want.

  

Messenger bags are really very easy to make, they are just a couple of rectangles. If you would like instructions comment below and I will post them.

What do you do when you can’t find what you want?

You make it!!!

I have been looking for a makeup brush roll for so long that I decided today to make one instead because I couldn’t find one that I loved. I had some very luxurious black fabric that I have never used because I didn’t want to cut it up and found some really cute travel fabric at Spotlight the other day.

I created a pocked then used my makeup brushes to measure the pockets for the brushes. I have even included a spot for lip liner, eyeliner and mascara or something else I may find I can’t live with out.

Pass it on…

"I promise something handmade to the FIRST 5 people who leave a comment here. However, to be eligible, you must repost this message, offering something handmade to 5 other people. The rules are that it must be handmade by you, and it must be sent to your 5 giftees sometime in 2011". Ready, set, GO!

Another blogger I know posted this tonight and I love the idea so I am passing it on.

Looking forward to making some handmade gifts this year…. comment away :o)

Its that time again

Each month I sit down and do a meal plan. This means that I plan out Breakfast, Morning Tea, Lunch, Afternoon Tea and Dinner for every day. From this plan I create my shopping list and do my shopping online It saves me from dragging 2 boys around the shops and a whole bunch of time and stress. It also saves us a bit of money on impulse buying and it means we spend less on junk food and take away as everything is planned out for us.

So I thought I would share with you this months meal plan.(January Meal Plan 2011) Its a PDF Document so you will need a PDF View such as Adobe Acrobat to read it.

Its hot and the last thing I feel like doing at the moment is cooking so we have a lot of meals that I can BBQ and have salad with. We are going camping this month so I have planned for that as well (yay really looking forward to this)

I know its not creative but I hope it inspires you :o)

I love this time of day

I love this time of day, Zachary has gone down for a nap

Michael is watching old school cartoons (Felix the cat) in the theatre room

and I get to have some peace. With 2 very active and full on boys in the house its a rare commodity that I will take whenever I can get it. So I have decided to use this time and some of the fabric I picked up on my last trip to Spotlight with Michael when we got the material for his library bag (check it out here)

I start a new semester of uni shortly and as much as I drool over stationery I can never justify getting those really pretty notebooks, I go through them too fast as I take copious amounts of notes and much to my husbands disgust and dismay can’t get out of the habit of writing my assignments and notes on paper before I type them up. So instead of spending a fortune on pretty notebooks I have made myself a notebook cover.

It’s time to get ready for school!!!

 

So since I have shared my goals for this year I thought I should update when I actually make a step towards them so, this week I joined the gym closest to us and have actually been four times since I signed up. This involves me getting up at 5:30am to drag myself out of bed and get there for the 5:50am classes. As a result I hurt but I am determined to look good for Bali.

Friends of our are heading off for a year to travel and work and since I am all creative at the moment I thought I would make another one of my passport pockets for them to take with them. I think the hardest thing about making your own pattern/design is that there isn’t a set of instructions for you to follow which makes it hard when its late at night and you are trying to recreate something you came up with on a whim. I had to unpick too many stiches to count but I have figured it all out now and have learnt my lesson - “Always write down instructions and take photos of each step” and from now on will post any designs I come up with on here for anyone who may wish to use them.

So onto this weeks project…

I  love this time of year, the shops are full of stationery as parents get school supplies. Every year at this time I get new stationery for me to use for my uni studies. But this year is different, our eldest Michael starts Kindy this year so on Saturday we had a date to go get everything he needs for school including a trip to Spotlight so he could pick our material for me to make him a library bag. Which resulted in a couple of debates about which material he could choose from but we final picked 2 different patterned material which are very… interesting together but I think he must have known because the end result is actually quite cute, I think. What do you think?

It’s a little long at the moment, but anyone who knows Michael knows that by the end of the year it will probably be too short

It’s not the traditional type of library but, its a satchel and Michael loves it.

“Every day is an opportunity to be creative – the canvas is your mind, the brushes and colours are your thoughts and feelings, the panorama is your story, the complete picture is a work of art called, ‘my life’. Be careful what you put on the canvas of your mind today – it matters.”  — Innerspace

What to do?

Louis and I moved our little family into a new home just over 6 months ago and after being in our other place for almost 6 years we had a lot of junk. Junk that just got tossed into boxes, sealed and put into the garage to sort through. A few of those boxes contain a whole bunch of material that I have picked up over time, thinking “I will make something fabulous with this.” But here’s the rub… I never do it!
So we are wading our way through the boxes coming across my material as we go and since I now have this goal to make something at least once a week, I am going to use the material I already have and get on to it. I spent a couple of hours wading through the myriad of free online tutorials and patterns I finally decided to make passport covers for Louis and I, not a huge undertaking but we are heading to Bali at the end of March for a week without the kids and I am excited about it so I am going to make them to kick off 2011

My Passport Cover

The photo doesn’t do the colours justice so I tried to get a better one.

The inside pocket 

Thank you to Michelle for sharing :o)